Alan Lightman, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018)
In this literate and charming text, physicist and humanist Alan Lightman writes of his (and our) desire for something more than the material universe, even though there is no evidence for it that he can accept. After a transcendent experience in which he felt he was one with the night sky, Lightman found himself pondering the difference between the Absolutes and the material world described by science. He notes that “Every culture in every era of human existence has had some concept of Absolutes. Indeed, one might group a large number of notions and entities under the heading of Absolutes: absolute truth (valid in all circumstances), absolute goodness, constancies of various kinds, certainties, cosmic unity, immutable laws of nature, indestructible substances, permanence, eternity, the immortal soul, God.” Science, on the other hand, describes the material world. Lightman neatly sums up the philosophical pragmatism that underlies science: “We scientists do...